Chairman of the committee,
The committee also accused the Accountant General of the Federation,
The lawmakers also asked the
According to the chairman of the committee, the approval of N107.7 billion for INEC as well as the disbursement of the additional N73 billion against the N45 billion budgeted was an abuse of office by the Accountant-General who is in charge of the public treasury.
The chairman also added that another audit query from the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation indicated that another N37,428 million was also withdrawn from the 10% rice milling funds for the election.
'The Accountant-General should explain the direct deduction of the fund from the federal government's account,' he said.
Speaking, representative of the
Olawale said, the
On her part, the then Acting INEC Chairperson, at the time of the release, Mrs
She further added that INEC wasn't mandated by laws to refund any fund approved for it for election purposes.
The lawmakers insisted that the approval of the funds by the Accountant-General's office was in breach of the financial regulations.
The committee's chairman, however, demanded that the request and approval memo of the funds be made available to the committee.
He asked the Director-General,
Customs reacted
On the other hand, the Comptroller General (CG) of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col.
He said the money was part of the statutory budget of the service, which represents an intervention fund, that was duly appropriated for in its budget for the year and was not meant to be a loan.
Ali said a presidential directive to the Accountant General approved the payment, adding that the final amount was N67 billion short of the over N100 billion approved for the service to meet the contingency of the time.
However, Olawale, who represented the
He said that, in consultations with the Director of Budget, it was decided that the payment be turned into a loan to be recovered from the agency's following year's budgetary allocations.
However, the Customs' CG maintained that there was no time the service was informed that the money so approved and released to it was a loan.
The Committee Chairman, therefore, demanded evidence of having recovered the said loan over the years and directed the Director of Budget to appear alongside the
© Pakistan Press International, source